Here's my Wordle solution for yesterday:
I can actually explain how I immediately jumped from "TORSE" to "CLASH":
- If my starting word is wrong, I try to use a "C" in my second guess.
- What comes after an "S" in the next-to-last spot? "E" is a good guess, but that's already eliminated. "H" is pretty high on the likely list. I thought about "SLUSH," but try not to use the same letter twice unless it's obvious or I'm running low on guesses.
Definitely some luck there, but it just seemed like a good guess.
BUT!
It just so happened that my Microsoft-powered "new tab" page had, a few moments before I did Wordle, shown me some click bait related to a band -- The Clash. So that word was on my mind.
I have to wonder if their algorithm didn't do something like "this user plays Wordle; this user tends to click on stories about music, definitely including 70s/80s punk; today's Wordle answer is CLASH; hey, intersection of clickability!"
It's not the first time I've noticed that the Wordle answer seems related to stuff I noticed on my "new tab" page right after I opened that "new tab" page and prepared to click on my Wordle bookmark.